


Flowers

by StAnni



Category: Gotham (TV)
Genre: Abduction, Ambiguous/Open Ending, Angst, Depression, F/M, Hurt/Comfort, Sexual Content
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-11-09
Updated: 2018-11-09
Packaged: 2019-08-21 01:04:05
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,852
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16566623
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/StAnni/pseuds/StAnni
Summary: Afterwards, lying next to each other, staring at the ugly concrete ceiling of the car park, her voice is breathy – unbearably beautiful “Imagine, you could have taken me on a real date, in your car, to a movie or something.”He smiles into the darkness “Brought you flowers.” She continues, the lilt of bitter-sweet mirth in her voice “Nobody ever gave me flowers before.”





	Flowers

They hole up in a basement room somewhere in the Narrows – or what is left of the Narrows – after the first fires wipes out most of the residential buildings. The place is dark and small but since it is just the two of them, it is fine. They sleep near the door, away from the one window, against the wall – in the darkest corner of the room. Not every night, but most nights, they see shadows against the murky window, trying to peer inside. They keep quiet – knowing they need the rest. It is terrifying and he tries to keep strong for her – pulling her close to him in deathly silence as long fingers cup around the foggy outline of a face. They breathe so quietly that he wakes up one night in a panic that she may have died – her face so still, her chest barely moving. But they survive like that in that place for a good few weeks.

During the days they go outside, join up with Gordon and the rest of the police and civilians trying to weed the more dangerous elements from the bones of Gotham. Selina stays next to him, always just a few feet away. She is morose, mono-syllabic on the best of days and still struggling with her injury. But she stays next to him, glancing at him every now and again – as if to make sure he is there, he is real.

When she first found him, when she tracked him down to the sixth floor room he occupied in a deserted building at that point, the first thing she did was to punch him square in the face. He was out for an hour. When he woke up, seeing her, hunched over some canned food she was heating up for them, he felt the weight of the world lift from his heart. “You’re here.” was all he could say. Off her look he realised that she was still pissed at him. She scraped out half of the contents from the tin and they ate in silence that night. But he felt whole again, almost alive and he could not stop reaching out for her, putting his hand on her shoulder, running his hand down her back – convincing himself of her presence. To her credit, she didn’t glower to much when he did it and only after about the sixth time of his touching her arm did she roll her eyes and decisively shove up a few feet farther from him. It was fine though, it was funny actually and he smiled, a smile she eventually, only slightly irritably, returned.

Later they have to leave the basement – the interest from the night crawlers outside just become too hard to sleep through. They construct a makeshift shack in an abandoned car park near pier fourteen and it is close enough to their daily meeting spot with Gordon, but concealed enough not to attract too much attention on their way back in the evenings.

During a skirmish with one of Firefly’s minions Bruce gets a bad burn on his left thigh. He watches Selina carefully dress the wound. They haven’t really spoken about what happened the night she shot, or about much thereafter. Their conversations are usually limited to addressing their immediate needs, the dangers they face now. It is as if their past looms in the background, frozen in time. So he leans close as she gently covers the burn with a swatch of material she had torn from her shirt, and he kisses her, soft but firmly.  
Her eyes flick up at him, shocked, even angry. “What the hell, Bruce?” But there is a smile playing on the corners of her lips and he takes it as a good sign. These days, you take the goods signs where you can find them. “Thanks?” he says, smiling. And she shoves his shoulder, lightly “Get a grip, Wayne.”

That night, for the first time, she turns to face him as they lay side by side. Their faces are less than an inch apart and he kisses her again, deeper this time, with clear intent, which she meets – tentatively at first but then with a sweet desperation that makes him pull her tight against him, feeling her taught lithe body strum against his. He has slept with other women before, but with Selina it is different – it feels less certain and undeniably definite at the same time. It feels as if he is walking a razor thin line, that at any time everything could go horribly devastatingly wrong. She opens her mouth to his and winces quietly when he fervently pushes her thigh up, moving between her legs. He breathes out an apology which she kisses away impatiently. It is perfect but it is also affecting and with every gasp and every clutch, moan and sigh, he feels like he is losing her and finding her at once.  
When it is over they stay, unmoving, against each other.  
“I hope nobody heard that.” She says quietly, her voice small.  
He puts his mouth to the top of her head and breathes her in raggedly. “Me too.” His heart breaking at the world that is left to them.

She leans over him the next morning, checking his burn wound. “Infected” she says with distaste, as if she is disappointed in him. He smiles, to reassure her, “It’ll heal.” But he can feel the dull throb around the burn, the bone deep ache that wasn’t there before, slowly spreading. “It better.” She mumbles at the burn before she drapes the cloth over it again, bundling it up.

Gordon isn’t at the meeting spot and the civilians, the couple of cops that remain, amble around concerned. One of the men, who Gordon once called “Hemrich” shakes his head. “Something must have happened.” Selina looks at Bruce with eyes large and grave. “We have to be smarter about this, Bruce.”

And they do. Meeting in the open, day after day at the same spot – going on their raids as if they are an army when they really, really are not. It is reckless.  
Selina’s voice is low next to him, intended only for him to hear “We’re targets out here. Sitting ducks. We should break.” 

They break away from the rest and make their way back to their shack, their make-shift home.  
Bruce’s concern about Gordon coils and snakes up to a sickening fear that he feels in his throat.  
But Selina pushes him down, unbuckles his belt, reaches for him – her hand warm and her eyes hooded. “What is worrying going to help, Bruce? We have to think about ourselves.” The second time feels different, more fraught, like they are both lost, rather drifting apart than closer together, and he holds her face as she arches beneath him, forcing her to look at him. “Stop.” She breathes quietly, moving her face to and fro, loosening his hold as she tries to look away. He lets go and his heart thuds painfully. 

She is quiet the next day as they pick their way through the rubble. They are not going to the meeting point. They have decided to head towards the territories closer to the river – where Jeremiah is rumoured to have set up camp. Selina found a machete hidden under boxes on pier and she has fastened it with her whip to her back. Bruce has a knife and a gun, very few bullets left, but only intended as a weapon of last resort. They don’t talk as the follow the broken highway upstream but she glances at him enough times for him to stop “What’s wrong?” he asks. She considers him, quietly. “If it weren’t for what happened, for everything. Do you think we would have ended up together?”  
He doesn’t tell her right away that he would have ended up with her, no matter what. He doesn’t want the answer to come too fast, too easy. He knows she doesn’t like things easy.  
“But it has turned out this way, Selina. And we are together.”  
Her face is unreadable, eyes shaded by her hand in the morning sun. She looks away and starts walking through the shocks of concrete and tar again. He watches her go for a few feet before he continues on, following her.

They find some of Jeremiah’s followers, stragglers though, scattered along the camp. It clearly is not his main camp and they should take more care with sifting through intel from the street and sewer kids. None of the stragglers really know where Jeremiah is holed up and at least six of the seven of them claim to have personally killed Gordon. It’s a waste of time but they do get some canned foods and provisions from the raid. On the way back Selina stops again, staring back at the camp they left in ruin. “What’s up?” Bruce asks, following her gaze. She doesn’t look at him, her voice uncertain “Don’t know. I’m just having a weird day.”

Back at their shack Bruce prepares them food from the stolen provisions and Selina gives herself a haircut with her machete, smiling broadly at the result. In terms of their new short history it is a good night and he can even get Selina to laugh when he tells her about how Alfred taught him how to make omelettes years ago. The mention of Alfred is a mood lifter and Selina tells Bruce how Alfred used to talk about him when he took care of her after her injury. For the first time in a long time it feels like he is close to her, or at least, that she is allowing him to be closer to her. 

She falls asleep, warmed by their gas fire, against his arm and later he wakes her, drawing her into him, quietly pulling down her jeans and trailing soft kisses down to her navel, to the center of her. It is the first time for them, exchanging those intimacies, and she returns the gesture – her mouth warm and her lashes grazing her cheeks as he looks down at her. 

Afterwards, lying next to each other, staring at the ugly concrete ceiling of the car park, her voice is breathy – unbearably beautiful “Imagine, you could have taken me on a real date, in your car, to a movie or something.”  
He smiles into the darkness “Brought you flowers.” She continues, the lilt of bitter-sweet mirth in her voice “Nobody ever gave me flowers before.”

He wakes up alone. The remnants of the fire, long having been stuffed out by sand, has left a greasy black mark where something has been dragged through it. Everything is gone, his bag, the provisions, Selina. He hears a high pitched laugh, deafening, piercing, and he is up – moving as if he is thrown by some unknown force – his feet, bare and sore from the walk before, thumping mercilessly on the concrete floor as he chases towards the sound.

And then it is gone. Silent – a world emptied out.

And he is alone.


End file.
